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Flixborough 1974 Memories – Barbara Nimmo

I’m Scunthorpe born and bred and have lived here all my life. I was a nurse at the time of the Flixborough disaster. I was pregnant with my eldest son, who’s coming up 50. I’ve got two other boys and I’ve been married for 51 years. It’s good to be able to come and talk about the Flixborough disaster and what it was like living through that at the time. 

I’d finished night shift Saturday morning. I’d been on a week of nights, and I would normally have gone home. But this particular day, I’d arranged to sleep at my parents’ home because we were due to go on holiday and I knew that, if I’d gone home, which was Flixborough at the time, I would have just slept through. I just needed to have somebody to get me up so I could get out and about and do the things that I needed to do. It’s very lucky that I did sleep at my parents’ home, otherwise I would have been in bed when Nypro blew up. 

I got up at lunchtime, and I went into town to do my shopping. I was in the market and the market was a very busy hub in 1974. There were lots of people around and I was at the meat stall buying some meat when there was a loud bang. I thought it was a bomb. I’d never heard a noise like that ever.

And I wanted to get out of the market. I think I probably was a little bit in shock because I just remember everybody else seemed to be wanting to come in and I was fighting to get through to get out. I think people were looking for where that noise had come from.

So, I got out of the market, and I was walking up the High Street. And I bumped into my husband. He had a business in the town, and he had been told that Nypro had blown up and he was coming into town to my mother in law’s place of work, which was at Page’s, the dress shop. So, he knew his father and brother were at home watching the Schoolboy International and they lived on Stather Road, which was the houses that were absolutely demolished opposite from Nypro. 

So, he was really concerned about his father and his brother. I can’t remember whether we actually spoke to his mum or not. But I remember we got into the car, because he wanted to go and see if they were ok. So, we were driving to Flixborough on the top road and we bumped into a load of cars. Everybody wanted to go and see what was happening. Lots of sightseers. We eventually got to the front of the queue because the police were there, and they were stopping people going into Flixborough. But my husband told them I was a nurse, and they thought that I might be able to do something to help, so they let us through. 

And we drove past our house. There was no door on, and the windows were broken. It was dusty and dirty, and glass was on the bed and downstairs. So, there was just cleaning up to do and getting the glaziers in to sort the windows out and things like that. I was so thankful that I’d actually stayed at my parents’ home because, when we went up to the bedroom, the actual wardrobe had been blown over onto the bed. I was only about 3 months’ pregnant at the time, my son was born in November. I may well have lost the baby, so it was great that I hadn’t stayed there that night.

We went down the hill to see if there was anything that we could do, and the devastation of the houses was plain to see. But there wasn’t actually anything to do. The ambulances had all been and transported all the injured up to the hospital. 

Nypro in the days after the disaster.

So, I said to my husband, “let’s go up to the hospital”, because obviously, with a disaster in the area, every medical person was expected to turn up to work to help. So, I arrived and went into A&E. I was put on the minor injuries, the walking wounded, so just to clean people’s wounds up and do the dressings and so on and so forth. 

In the hospital everybody was in shock. Even the staff were in shock about everything that had happened. There were lots of walking wounded from all over. Even in the town centre it had blown windows out, so people were getting cut with the flying glass. In the surrounding villages they were having to come in for wounds. So, it was really lots of just cuts and bruises and shock, because that bang was so loud. I think it was heard over the river in Hull, and all over, wasn’t it? It was heard for miles and miles away. It was like a bomb going off. I’ve never heard a noise like it since.

Hospitals are always prepared for this type of incident and they practised regular scenarios because it wasn’t unusual for them to prepare for a massive disaster, and if it wasn’t the steelworks, if it wasn’t was BOC, it was Nypro. So, people were coming in on their days off because that’s what you did. You went in and you were waiting to be told where to go and what to do by the people that were running the disaster.

You just put yourself into that mindset. You forget about everything else, and you just get on with what you’re trained to do, and I think it’s afterwards that the shock hits you.

So, that was Saturday. My husband found his father and brother up at the hospital. And we couldn’t go home that night. So, I was back to my mum’s. I’ve never stayed there since. 

My parents-in-law wanted to get into their house. They were stopped because they needed to make sure the houses were safe for people to go in. They had a caravan, but unfortunately for them, there wasn’t such a thing as compensation like there is today. So, they lost their home. They lost a lot of their possessions. But their insurance didn’t cover all the loss, so they were out of pocket. They ended up buying a house in Bottesford and having to take on more of the mortgage. So, they were upset about all of that. 

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